The Fourth Leg of the Stool: Why Compassionate Listening Is Essential in Healthcare and Leadership, with Dr. Assaad Mounzer
In the high-pressure world of medicine, even the most accomplished doctors can face exhaustion, self-doubt, and burnout. Yet what if the same tools that restore resilience and clarity could transform the way we lead, care for others, and live fully?
In this episode of the Spirituality in Leadership podcast, Andrew Cohn sits down with Assaad Mounzer, a retired urologist, mindfulness teacher, and coach who now helps individuals and groups move from burnout to engagement through mindfulness and self-awareness. Drawing from decades in medicine and his own personal journey across cultures and careers, Assaad shares how his understanding of healing expanded beyond procedures and prescriptions.
Assaad reflects on his early years growing up in Lebanon, his medical training, and his eventual career in the United States, where he discovered the powerful role of compassionate listening in patient care. Over time, the pressures of perfectionism and the demands of the medical profession led him to experience burnout, prompting a deeper exploration of spirituality, personal growth, and mindfulness.
At the heart of the conversation is Assaad’s practical framework for living and leading with intention: the four keys of mindfulness, including attention, values, wisdom, and an open heart. Together, these principles offer a path toward greater resilience, emotional balance, and authentic leadership.
This episode explores the intersection of healing, self-awareness, and leadership, reminding us that true leadership begins with how we care for ourselves and how we show up for others.
Tune in to discover how mindfulness, compassion, and intentional living can transform both leadership and wellbeing.
Key Takeaways
Burnout Is Real and Preventable: More than 50% of physicians experience burnout. Mindfulness builds resilience and can significantly reduce burnout rates.
Healing Is Not the Same as Curing: Healing involves compassion, listening, and caring for the whole person. This includes the body, mind, emotions, and spirit.
Compassionate Listening Heals: Research shows that over 50% of patients begin to improve simply when they feel truly heard and cared for.
Self-Compassion Comes First: We cannot authentically care for others without first extending compassion and forgiveness to ourselves.
The Four Keys of Mindfulness Offer a Practical Path: Attention and intention, values, wisdom, and the open heart provide a framework for daily practice and growth.
Neuroplasticity Supports Growth: Practicing positive behaviors like kindness and honesty rewires the brain and helps them become second nature over time.
Spirituality Belongs in Medicine: Addressing the spiritual dimension of patients and ourselves is essential to whole-person care.
Grief Work Deepens Capacity to Serve: Doing our own inner work, including grieving unresolved losses, makes us more available to others.
In This Episode:
[00:00] Introduction to mindfulness and values
[01:34] Introduction to Assaad Mounzer
[03:26] Assaad’s journey from Lebanon to the U.S.
[07:26] Early medical practice and cultural influence
[08:42] Introduction to spirituality and healing
[11:41] Integrating spirituality into medical practice
[15:40] Burnout, writing the book, and discovering mindfulness
[18:56] The four keys of mindfulness
[23:39] Neuroplasticity and practicing values
[25:06] Wisdom and the open heart
[27:33] Spirituality, medicine, and leadership
[32:40] Current work: retreats, workshops, and coaching
[34:29] Addressing grief and deep healing
[37:49] How to learn more and connect
[39:04] Closing remarks and podcast outro
Resources and Links
Spirituality in Leadership Podcast
Dr. Assaad Mounzer
Website: https://www.mindfulmdcoaching.com
Email: talkmounzer@mindfulmdcoaching.com. | asssadmounzer@gmail.com
Andrew Cohn
Music:
Listen to the Podcast here
Watch our Podcast episode
Transcript
Assaad Mounzer: When I learned the 4 keys of mindfulness, I said, "Oh my God, you know, that's so practical." It's not like you're sitting on a cushion and meditating. No. Mindfulness is bringing your attention and being mindful to every minute of your life. With the mindfulness practice, that's the first thing, because gratitude cuts down on negative emotions, improves your immune system, improves also your attention and builds your resilience. So gratitude is not one of the pillars, but it's so important that we start with it in the morning.
Andrew Cohn: Would you say that the values to me sounded a little bit like a direction? It's the way I'm facing.
Assaad Mounzer: It's not only that, because values are like positive habits that you plan and you practice for yourself.
Andrew Cohn: Welcome to the Spirituality in Leadership podcast. I'm Andrew Cohn. Spirituality in Leadership is a platform for conversations with leaders at all levels about bringing our spiritual dimensions to our leadership, our teams, and our workplaces, and all areas of our lives in order to achieve greater success and fulfillment and build and sustain healthier organizations. If you'd like to connect with me to talk further about these topics and/or about individual or team coaching, leadership workshops, or team alignment, please go to my website, lighthouseteams.com. Enjoy the podcast.
Welcome back to the Spirituality and Leadership Podcast. I'm really happy to have with me in this episode Assaad Mounzer. Assaad is a doctor, or retired doctor, surgeon, urologist, now mindfulness practitioner and mindfulness teacher who leads retreats as well as working groups, and I believe individuals as well, in the area of mindfulness and health. He's based in Charlotte, North Carolina. And Assaad talks about his personal journey, being educated in Lebanon, coming to the US, doing his practice in Bluefield, Virginia, what it was like to work in a small town there and what he learned from his patients about what he was doing very well in his practice, which they weren't used to. He talked about his own experience of burnout in the medical profession and what he called the burden of being a perfectionist. He talked about what led to his writing a book in 2018 called Burnout to Engagement. And the 4 keys to mindfulness, which include attention, values, wisdom, and the 4 dimensions of having an open heart. He talked about the impact of compassion and listening on healing, as well as his own experience healing grief and bringing that into some of his mindfulness workshops as well. He really, to me, is inspiring, informative, instructional, And as a doctor, to talk about his experience as well as his research about how people hear better when you listen to them is really quite powerful and relevant. Hope you enjoy the conversation.
I am so pleased to welcome to the podcast Assaad Mounzer, Dr. Assaad Mounzer, whom I have known for years. It's sort of a long story and a wonderful story, and I'm grateful to feel your presence as my friend, not to mention as an expert in the area of mindfulness and medicine. And health and healing. Welcome to the podcast, Assaad.
Assaad Mounzer: Thank you very much, Andrew. It is really a pleasure to connect again and have this discussion with you, of course, informally. And yeah, I mean, having had a long journey from medical school to becoming a mindfulness teacher and a coach, I like to share some of what I learned with people. It's like I've always been a good student and a good teacher. So I still am a student of life, of course, and, and I like to share, you know, whatever my experience is with others.
Andrew Cohn: So where should we start? Perhaps we could start a little bit about your journey from perhaps a more traditional background to moving to a different part of the world. I don't remember, forgive me at this moment, where you went to medical school and where that was, but why don't you share a little bit of your story if you would? And then where I'd like to go, of course, is what, what leads you to this topic and then some of the teaching points you have for us.
Assaad Mounzer: Okay, well, you know, it's a long story, so I'm gonna be brief. I'm originally from Lebanon. That's where I was born and raised, Lebanon, Middle East. And Lebanon, you know, most of people don't know, it's a beautiful country. A country we don't have desert, we have only mountains and beaches. So it's beautiful and we go and visit every year in the summer, even now. So I went to medical school at the French Faculty of Medicine in Beirut. So we learned French and Arabic in school and sometimes English, and certain schools teach Arabic and English only, so it depends. After I finished my medical degree, I went to the American University of Beirut where I did a residency. And my residency was in general surgery and urology, which is the surgery of the kidneys, bladder, prostate, and that. But then I decided to come to the United States to do a fellowship because it was so difficult at that time. I was 19, I graduated from medical school in 1977. And I stayed at the American University in 1983. And it's very difficult to come to the United States at that point. So I found a research position which was occupied by a resident who was before me and he facilitated the process. So I went there to do a research fellowship and I thought, you know, just coming to the United States, you know, for Lebanon is something important. Like, you know, but he went abroad and studied in the US. And I liked it here. We had to pass several exams. It's like Board 1, 2, and 3 all combined together. It was called at the time VQE, Visa Qualifying Examination. And also my research was in California, so I applied for the FLEX at that time, which was the exam to get the license, and I got a California license that I never used actually. But before the year finished, I realized that I don't wanna go back. The situation in Lebanon was not good and I was wishing I could, there was a way to stay. And so I haven't mentioned the year before that, 1982, I was in France actually, you know, taking that exam, the VQE, because you had to go outside Lebanon to take the exam. And at that time, the president of Lebanon was killed and I knew the situation was going bad. So I came to the United States and I did some interviews And one of them was at, uh, uh, in Buffalo at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute. So I, after I finished my research, first year of research, I got accepted at the urologic oncology fellowship. And it was a great program. I learned a lot. I, we did a lot of major cancer surgeries and I wrote to the board and they told me, you need to repeat 3 years of urology. So they considered 2, 2 years of my training. And myself, which, which was okay. So I did repeat 3 years, became board eligible and board certified, and came to a small town called Bluefield, 'cause we had to come to a shortage area to be able to get the green card. So I got the green card and I was supposed to be there for a couple of years and I liked the area, so I stayed for 15 years and I had a great, great practice.
Andrew Cohn: In Bluefield, Virginia?
Assaad Mounzer: Correct. So during that time, within a few months, my practice flourished and I had a full practice. And so after a couple of years, 2, 3 years, something came to my mind, okay, now what? Because it was really like I've achieved everything I wanted to. I wanted to become board certified. First, I wanted to become a physician, then I wanted to come to the United States. And I believe at one point, there was always some kind of divine intervention which facilitated my journey. And I didn't realize that until several years later, of course. So after 3 years of my private practice, I knew about the University of Santa Monica where we met the first time because I had attended Insight the year before, which was a nice program for me because I've never taken a personal growth seminar. 'Cause in Lebanon, you just focus on medical schools, studying, and so there was really nothing about the whole being.
Andrew Cohn: And by the way, that's similar to New York where I grew up, by the way, just saying. And when you talk about insight, you're talking about insight transformational seminars. And where did you, if I may ask, I'm sorry to interrupt, but where did you do that? In or near Boston?
Assaad Mounzer: Chicago.
Andrew Cohn: Oh, Chicago.
Assaad Mounzer: Chicago, where I repeated my 3 years of residency. So I knew about a program called Spiritual Psychology, I enrolled in the program. I hesitated because I had to travel to California, to Santa Monica once a month for 2 years to get the degree. And I did it. And that's how, that was my first encounter, really, like a real encounter with spirituality and what healing meant, because I didn't know anything about healing before that. Because in medical school, and for now, I think they're teaching a little bit more about spirituality and healing, but at that time, there was a no-no, there was a complete separation between science and spirituality. That was because that was one of your questions, how did I get into the spiritual work and the healing work? That's how it happened.
Andrew Cohn: Do you think that your experience coming from Lebanon makes it different from other physicians or medical experts who are introduced to the space of spirituality and then have the opportunity if they choose? By the way, I've had several physicians and experts and people with lots of initials after their names on the podcast for the last, over the last 6 months, but I'm curious I'd like to know if you think your background and your growing up in Lebanon, a different culture, do you think that influenced how spirituality met your educational experience?
Assaad Mounzer: Yeah, it's interesting that you ask this question because when I first started my private practice, I had really a lot of concerns about my accent, about, you know, I'm a foreigner working in a small town, if the people are gonna like me or not, or, you know, I had a lot of questions in my mind. So the nice thing which happened And I think it had to do with our culture. After I saw a few first patients, one of them told me, "Thank you for sitting and talking to me." So it's like I realized, am I not supposed to sit and talk to my patient? For me, it was like, of course, it's part of what medicine is for me. But it doesn't, it seems like not everybody gives their patients the time to express themselves. And that was, I think, one of the great qualities that I inherited from my culture because our culture is, people are very close to each other. They care for each other. They are compassionate and they have empathy. So my compassionate listening skills helped me a lot with my interaction with patients. And that's why my patients loved me because I really gave them the time. I listened to them. I did not judge them. So that was like a great discovery for me that I didn't realize that was one of my qualities until later on.
Andrew Cohn: Nice. So that kind of feedback helped highlight a strength that you may not have specifically named, but it was something that your patients appreciated.
Assaad Mounzer: Yeah.
Andrew Cohn: Beautiful. Okay, so you're exposed to this spiritual thing, however you would describe it. I typically don't define spirituality on this podcast, but for you, I'm curious to know, how did it inform your practice? You could talk about how it informed you personally if you want to share a life story, of course. Certainly I'd love to hear a bit about your work and the impact of these principles or this learning or whatever you took from that and how it informed your work.
Assaad Mounzer: Yeah, interesting question. For me, it was a healing experience, just to be honest, because during the course of the 2 years, the whole program was experiential learning. So we worked with each other with things they call trio. So we worked as counselor and then as a client, then as a neutral observer. And with time, I found out that I was healing a lot of childhood memories. I learned the concept of the inner child, which was completely foreign to me, you know, it's like, inner child inside me? You know, what do you mean? I can talk to them? That was really a great experience, just healing the irrational beliefs that sometimes we collected during our childhood from our parents or our teachers or our friends or whoever likes to criticize us, you know. We are affected in a way, one way or the other. So there was a lot of healing going on. And so my relationship with myself got better because I used to be a perfectionist. Like, I have to be perfect or else people will not like me. I have to be perfect to be able to be accepted. I have to be perfect. So that was a big burden. And I think that was one of the reasons eventually later on for my burnout because nothing is perfect and no one is perfect. Only God is perfect. So going to or trying to be perfect is unreasonable. So my relationship with myself got better. And of course my relationship with my patients got better. I started sitting more calmer on the inside and listening to them. Because sometimes my mind is working when I'm listening to them and like, how am I going to treat them and are they going to get better? It's like I want everybody, I wanna cure everyone. That was my motto when I started being a perfectionist. That's what it is. And I had a great practice, there's no doubt. But after I did the program, I really was in a more centered position. I was in a more, had more inner peace. And believe it or not, to be able to graduate, we had to have the project for our second year. And my project was to talk about healing to doctors. And at that time it's like, no, no, no, no. It was a no-no, like meditation, healing. No, no, that doesn't coincide with science, not at all. So when I, so I prepared this, I have to because I had to graduate. And when I started speaking, you know, there was a group of physicians at the hospital where I was working. We had like once a month some kind of a conference. I was shivering. And so I introduced the concept of healing, that healing is not necessarily curing. Healing is about being compassionate, is about caring for the other person, is about listening. And so when I started talking about that, you know, it got better and better. At the end, I was surprised. I thought they're going to throw tomatoes at me. You know, many of them came and congratulated me. So I said, oh my God. So those people probably are thinking the same thing, that something is missing in our medication, but they were afraid to talk about it. So that gave me the courage to start talking about healing and making more conferences for nurses, for physicians, and even to the public. We did a few things like learning seminars to the public. And it went very well. And that was like, for me, it was a great experience, a great discovery about myself and about other people.
Andrew Cohn: Yeah. Thank you. And then at some point you veered towards mindfulness. I'm curious to know how that happened for you. And then maybe you could lean into talking about your book, which is 2018. Your book is called Burnout to Engagement, and it's behind you for those of you watching on video. We'll put a link to the book in the show notes, and maybe you're skipping some years, I don't know, but I wanna be sure to highlight the book in this conversation and also the 4 keys of mindfulness, which maybe comes from the book conversation as well. But then, so from this experience and from the speaking, becoming more comfortable talking about healing in a broader sense, then you found your way to mindfulness. Is that fair to say?
[00:15:41] Assaad Mounzer: Well, in a way, the reason I wrote the book is because I experienced burnout myself. And I think I experienced it twice. The first time I called it a midlife crisis. This was like 15 years after I started my practice. The first 15 years of my practice, I had a private practice. The last 15 years, I was an employee of the hospital because I didn't wanna deal anymore with, you know, the administrative stuff. So after a few years, you know, towards the end, I felt like I'm not happy anymore. I'm not satisfied on the inside. I don't have the passion that I used to have. Something was missing. And I didn't know what it was because I was cutting down on all my major surgery. And I was ready to get to, to go to retire in a few years. And I said, well, I'm gonna cut down. And that by itself just brought everything to a routine. At one point I started getting upset and nervous and anxious because I didn't know what my next step was going to be. And that's when I did a lot of research and that's when I learned about burnout and I did a lot of research. And after 2 years I decided to retire and I had all that information and I said, oh my God, I've read so many books and I had so much information and my own impact, so I need to write a book. That's when I wrote the book, Burnout to Engagement. I think I started like 2016 and I retired in 2018. And so just a few months before I retired, I said, okay, now what? I'm going to retire and do what? You know, when you're busy working like 15 hours a day and suddenly like you stop, it's like something is going to be missing.
So I decided to take a coaching certification and I was introduced to coaching several years before that at the University of Santa Monica, as a matter of fact. But I didn't wanna travel anymore, so I looked for a closer place because I used to live in Virginia and I found a program in North Carolina. It was a great program. We, it took a year to get our certification. We did a lot of reading, a lot of practice. And from my research, especially from Mayo Clinic, I found out that Mindfulness builds resilience and that by itself will cut down on the rate of burnout. And in my research, I was shocked actually, not only surprised to find out that the rate of burnout among physicians was more than 50%. And at the time in 2016, it was like, oh my God, really? I mean, I know I experienced it, but I didn't know it was so high. And the research from Mayo Clinic, they did research, 10,000 physicians or 20,000 physicians. That's why I got interested in mindfulness and took a mindfulness certification, which took also a whole year, also practice and experiments. And I retired and then started, you know, talking more about healing, about mindfulness. And mindfulness itself added a lot of things to my education because mindfulness is not only meditation. That brings us to the 4 keys of mindfulness, which also was new to me when I started learning the process. And so when I learned the 4 keys of mindfulness, I said, oh my God, that's so practical. It's not like you're sitting on a cushion and meditating. No, mindfulness is bringing your attention and being mindful to every minute of your life. And so the first key of mindfulness is attention and intention. So we learn to focus our attention and we start that by focusing on the breath. And believe me, it takes time to really, because our mind, we call it the monkey mind. Is very busy all the time. We cannot stop our mind, but we can shift our attention. So while we're breathing and focusing on our breath, as our mind wanders, all what I ask people to do is, okay, acknowledge the thought and bring your attention back to the breath. So that's the first key. Just bring your attention. And it doesn't have to be breathing. It could be anything. It could be a candle, it could be a mantra. Okay? Whatever works for you, but breathing goes with us wherever we go, so it's easier to focus on the breath.
Andrew Cohn: And may I ask you, when, when you, when you're talking about that thing to focus on, my understanding, and I haven't studied mindfulness this way, although I do, I have taken some trainings and the like, is that the important thing is that it'd be something sort of something we can touch into almost like at a physical level, not we're thinking about, right? So we're not focusing on a thought, we're focusing on something tangible. Is that fair? Whether it's the out-breath or a candle or an object or something, physically currently sensing, right? But the key is to just be in it.
Assaad Mounzer: We need to get your attention back, right? Because when your mind wanders, you have thoughts coming from everywhere or emotions you can feel and also sensations you feel in your body. We need to acknowledge them. We don't want to suppress them. And at the same time, we need to refocus on what we were focusing on during the day. It could be your work until something happened during your work and you get upset and angry or something. And you are disturbed. So mindfulness will help you just not react, but respond. So, okay, I'm upset now. What do I need to do? Okay, I need to calm myself, take a deep breath, and go back to what I'm doing or I was doing with more energy and more attention. And that's how we bring our attention to everyday life by setting an intention. That's why the first key is attention and intention. So intention is like making a personal declaration how you want to show up in the world today, or what do you want to focus on during this day? How do you want to act during this day? And in our practice, we set that intention every day in the morning. The first thing we do in the morning is to be grateful for something or someone. So that's the first, with the mindfulness practice, that's the first thing because gratitude cuts down on negative emotions, it improves your immune system, and it improves also your attention and builds your resilience. So gratitude is not one of the pillars, but it's so important that we start with it in the morning. The second key of mindfulness is values. You could be mindful, but you could be a mean person, I tell people. So really you need to have positive values, you know, your guide in your life. Like that light behind you, I tell people that's your purpose, that's your mission. So every time the path goes away from your values, you need to look back at that light and correct, come back onto the path. And we all get away from the path. I mean, like I said, nobody's perfect. So it's so important to have something to focus on.
Andrew Cohn: And would you say that the values to me sounded a little bit like direction. It's the way I'm facing. So if my mind wanders and I come back to the first pillar about attention, sort of, okay, hold on, I'm gonna redirect, I'm gonna come back to the breath or some sort of an anchor of some kind. And then my values will then help me almost like, I almost see it for myself as like facing in a certain direction. Does that fit?
Assaad Mounzer: It does, but it's not only that because values are like positive habits that you plan and you practice for yourself. Let's say being kind is one of the values, like being honest is one of the values, being courageous and taking the next step in whatever you want to do, it could be one of the values. Learning could be another value. Some people spend their lives just learning, so that's a value. Compassion could be one of the values. Helping others could be one of the values.
Andrew Cohn: Uncertainty are bigger. All of those as behaviors, they're behavior-centric. They're not just principles, right? Right. They're behaviors. Got it.
Assaad Mounzer: Right. Because you need to practice them, and when you practice them, it is a behavior. So when you become more and more mindful of your actions, and if your actions are not, you know, in alignment with your values, then you have to stop and think about it and rethink, you know, the path you're gonna keep moving forward. If you hurt somebody on purpose, for example, because you want to advance or you want to win something and you don't want them to compete with you, after that, if they fail, you regret it. Oh my God, I shouldn't have done that. I mean, that means you got out of alignment from the values that maybe you had before. You could do something, forgive yourself first and then forgive the other person and ask for forgiveness. That's one example. So yes, it is partly a behavior because those values are practiced, are practicing to practice them. And the more you practice, the more it gets ingrained in your brain. And I don't wanna go into this, but that's something called neuroplasticity. The more you do something and practice it, whether it's playing tennis or ping pong or being kind, you can practice being kind, you can practice being honest, you can practice. So all that takes Practice. And our brain, the more you do it, there are new circuits which form in our brain and they stay as long as you keep practicing. They stay for a long time and they become second nature at a certain point. Mm-hmm.
Andrew Cohn: Right. And that's neuroplasticity. So these behaviors can help us rework these circuits in our brain that make them much more habituated, as I understand it, easier to do. It doesn't feel as, it's like learning another language in a certain way, if that metaphor fits.
Assaad Mounzer: Yeah. Yeah. Good.
Andrew Cohn: Beautiful. Okay. So attention, values, then the third one is wisdom.
Assaad Mounzer: And wisdom means you learn from your mistakes. It's like, what am I, am I doing something which is beneficial to myself and others, or am I doing something which is hurting myself and others? So if I want to follow my values, then I need to practice doing things which are beneficial to myself and others. And since we all commit mistakes, that's why It's okay to practice self-forgiveness. It's okay if we make a mistake. So acceptance is one of the also great qualities that we learn and we can teach ourselves to accept things as they are. It doesn't mean we cannot change them, but it means this is a fact. I look at it and then I take the next step to correct. So wisdom is acceptance, is being discerning. So discerning awareness of where am I going, what am I doing? What am I feeling? Where my mind is going? And sometimes our mind, we start judging ourselves. So also we need to be careful about that too. It's, oh, okay, now I'm judging myself. So what's going on? Okay, so we don't say, oh, I'm stupid, I'm judging myself. No, I'm judging myself. Oh, I accept I'm not perfect. I accept the fact. So what is it that I can do to improve whatever I'm doing? And the fourth key, which is, for me, it's like the most interesting. For me, it's called the open heart. And the open heart has 4 qualities. One is equanimity, and second one is loving kindness, third one is compassion, and then the fourth one is empathetic joy. So once we start teaching ourselves how to become kind, teaching ourselves how to become compassionate, not only to others but ourselves, because most of the time, We focus on other people. We forget to focus on ourselves. We forget to be compassionate to ourselves. And that's the first thing I teach people in my retreats or my seminars. Self-forgiveness and self-compassion are so essential for your well-being. To be in good health, you need at least those two qualities, to work on them every day.
Andrew Cohn: Okay. Attention, values, wisdom, and the four dimensions of an open heart.
Assaad Mounzer: Right. Yeah.
Andrew Cohn: And, and one of the things, I mean, you and I've talked about this and it's, as you know, it's a focus of this podcast is this notion of leadership. And, you know, you and I are talking not necessarily because you've got stories to tell about CEOs and senior business teams. That's one aspect of leadership. There are many, many, but I know that in your book there's a chapter on spirituality and medicine. I'm not sure if you knew this, but a few months ago I had Harold Koenig on the podcast from, uh, the Duke Center of Religion, Spirituality, and Healing. And, and, about the connection, which is your world, of the connection between things that can be defined as spiritual, including some of the principles you're talking about, and health. And health and directing our own health, not to mention caring for others in whatever ways that may be, is a form of leadership. I could be caring for others as a dad. I could be caring for others as a coach or as a consultant or as a boss or manager, whatever it is. Those are all ways that we care for people. And that would just be one dimension of leadership. But tell me what what the leadership thing means for you, because I know you've thought about it and I'm just curious to know what your thoughts are about it. Maybe it has to do with leading a medical practice or maybe it has to do with a family or modeling healthy behaviors. But tell me about leadership and the impact of these principles on leadership.
Assaad Mounzer: Yeah, it's interesting that you mentioned that. Yeah, I mentioned Harold Koenig because he did a lot of research on the power of prayer and spirituality in healing. Even there was a cardiologist also who did a lot of research and they found out that people who pray or go regularly to attend services are healthier. They have less admission to hospitals, they're happier in their lives, et cetera. So that separation between spirituality and medicine is not anymore valid. It's not anymore valid because spirituality for me has always been inside medicine. Because when you treat someone, I mean, you treat them as a whole, you treat their body, their mind, their emotions, they are in front of you, their soul is in front of you. So it's okay to ask some spiritual questions. And the first time I attended a seminar on spirituality and medicine, I said, oh my God, somebody is thinking like me. And it was by Herbert Benson actually, who is a cardiologist at Harvard and they are the one who started the mindfulness program with Jon Kabat-Zinn and the MindBody Institute and all that. And I was still in Chicago and they gave a conference on spirituality and medicine and they gave us like just 4 questions to ask a patient when they come to see you, which are completely different than what we ask. We ask always physical thing.
So anyway, so that was like an opening, an opening for me. And I started learning more and more about spirituality and about the human being, because if we don't address the soul, if we don't first ourselves, like being a leader in your own life is the most important thing to do to be a good leader. You have to be a spiritual leader in your own life and following the 4 keys of mindfulness. And once you do that, it would be much easier to be able to guide others. So for me, spirituality and medicine is about compassionate listening. Herbert Benson, when he started talking about spirituality and mind-body medicine, he introduced the healthcare system as a three-legged stool. Now, one of them was procedures, one of them was medications, and the third one, which was never mentioned in our medical education before, was self-care. So he introduced self-care as part of that stool to be able to be stable. So we need to teach patients, teach ourselves first, self-care, how to take care of ourselves, not only on the physical level, but also on the emotional level, the mental level, and spiritual level. And there are many ways we can do that. That was like something I liked. So in my book, I introduced the fourth leg of the stool because in my experience, even those were not enough. And the fourth leg that I introduced was compassionate listening. Because I realize that people, and also they did a lot of research, more than 50% of the people start getting better when you start listening to them, when you have compassion, when they know that you care for them. So in my view, that's leadership. That's leadership in your own life. That's leadership in your profession, to care and listen to other people, to have their interest in mind and good interest in mind. So not to be selfish and thinking all the time about ourselves, but find a way to be able to be inclusive. That's part of leadership, being inclusive and listening to everyone because everyone has something, something to say, something to contribute, even in business meetings. So good leaders usually listen, they are compassionate, they are empathic, they talk to everyone and listen to everyone before they make their decisions. I mean, these are the main things that I just now remembered, and I'm sure there are a lot of other things, but—
Andrew Cohn: Oh, well, I can't expect you to distill everything down to one conversation. So when you, the two questions I wanna ask you is, what is your work right now? And the second question relates to how could people learn more about it if they wanted to? At one point you said something about your retreats, so you do lead retreats. Yeah. Right. Well, so I'm curious to know, yeah, please, please talk a bit about your work at this point in your career.
Assaad Mounzer: Yeah. At this point, you know, I retired from urology, of course, like 8 years ago. And since then I've been trying to find my way. How am I going? To introduce what I learned about healing, about mindfulness, about coaching. How am I going to introduce it to other people, to my clients? How am I gonna practice it first on myself and then teach it to other people? So I started doing like groups and talking to them about, let's say, the 4 keys of mindfulness. Then COVID came, so I started doing Zoom meetings. On the 4 Keys of Mindfulness, let's say once a week for 4 weeks. Then I made another program called Steps to Lead You from Burnout to Engagement based on my book. So it's an 8-week program and every week there is something new that people are going to learn in that program. I also started a 21-day challenge. I called it 21-Day Wellbeing Challenge. And I taught this in colleges because I found out that college students are asked, and there's so much stress, and they have a high rate of burnout, which surprised me actually. And I start step by step. Like I tell them, start meditating 5 minutes first, then you add 1 minute a day to be able, because you want them to really practice it and do it. You don't want them to think it's so difficult. And then I started doing retreats because first I was not sure about a retreat, it's a whole weekend.
So it took me 3, 4 years to start doing retreats. And retreat is now, it is my favorite thing because I feel like I create an atmosphere of trust, an atmosphere of safety so people can open up at a much deeper level. We talk about, of course, the Four Keys. We talk a lot about self-forgiveness, self-compassion. Like I said before, 2, 3 years later, I introduced the concept of grief because I was afraid to introduce that subject in a weekend and I didn't know how people were going to react. But after 3 years, I felt a little bit more solid in my experience and I had taken also a workshop on grief. It's called The Healer's Art. It was with a physician called Naomi Raymond and it was in California and it was a whole week. And it was all about grief. And it's interesting because during that workshop, I'm still affected when I talk about it. My best friend was killed in the war in Lebanon by a sniper. You know, it's like somebody who we don't know where they're coming from, kills a doctor who is doing his job at the hospital. I mean, and at the time I was not in Lebanon, I was in the United States doing my residency. He had already finished his residency in the US and came back to Lebanon to practice. So during those 5 days, during that, I think I sobbed for like 10 minutes. I mean, everybody was waiting for me. I couldn't stop because that was really the first time, and that was like 10 years later, the first time I really experienced the loss. So after I did that, I felt more comfortable being there for people because it's going to be their own process. It's going to be their own story. And all what I need to do is just be there to hold them, to listen to them, to be compassionate. And it worked real good. So I do it twice a year. Some of this year we may do it 3 times, the retreat, the weekend. We choose a place where it is calm and peaceful. Some have prayer walks in the ground, some have labyrinths. On the ground, on the ground too. So every time there is a different agenda and it is attached to healing. A lot of healing happens during those encounters.
Andrew Cohn: Yeah, beautiful. Can I ask you if it's okay, the experience about the grief in that workshop, what I'm hearing by inference, and I'd love to hear if you could speak to this, is by doing your own work on grief, you're more available to others. Perhaps you could even listen better because perhaps on a simple level, the grief can get in the way of the listening, perhaps. I mean, how would you–let's talk about that.
Assaad Mounzer: Definitely, definitely, not perhaps, definitely. If you have those, I'm gonna call them difficulties, but if you have those feelings that you have repressed for a long time that you're afraid of because in our culture, men don't cry. That was like 20 years ago now. I don't think it's a problem, but at that time, crying was a weakness. So I couldn't cry. I had to be by myself to be able to cry. So yeah, taking those seminars and being able to open myself in such a vulnerable way helped me a lot. First, it helped me heal, and second, it helped me realize that a lot of people would be supportive and there are a lot of people who can listen. So that gave me also the ability to be supportive and to listen better and be compassionate because I experienced it. So yeah, definitely, yeah, it does help.
Andrew Cohn: Beautiful. Where could people learn more about your work if they wanted to learn more?
Assaad Mounzer: Yeah, I have a website. It's called www.mindfulmdcoaching.com, which is the business name that I decided to take for myself when I retired from neurology. So we have a lot, we have a lot of exercises to do. There's a lot of explanations of what we do, or they can email me, you know, assaadmounzer@gmail.com. It could be an easy way to learn more about what we can offer. I can add their email to the newsletter. And so in the newsletter also, once or twice a month, I talk a lot about our workshops. And I have two emails, so I don't want to confuse people, but the second email is talkmounzer@mindfulmdcoaching.com. So it's related to the website and to the business. The other one, assaadmounzer@gmail.com, was my personal email before I started all this. So I use both. Those are the best ways. And on the website, there are ways also they can get in touch, contact with us, and they can ask questions. And we're all open and ready to talk to anyone.
Andrew Cohn: Nice. Thank you. Well, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and your journey. And as always, I have at least another hour of things I wanna talk with you about so we could wrap this up. And then just my hope is that we continue our conversation because I'm always enriched by it. And, uh, thank you again for your time and sharing your wisdom.
Assaad Mounzer: Thank you very much for your presence. I mean, that thing you're doing is amazing because a lot of people need to learn about spirituality and leadership. I mean, that's when I read the title, when you first talked about it, I said, oh my God, that's so much needed. So yeah, congratulations also on your podcast and on your newsletter. I like them and I learn a lot also.
Andrew Cohn: Thank you. Thank you so much, Assaad. Looking forward to continuing.
Assaad Mounzer: You take care.
Andrew Cohn: Thank you for listening to Spirituality in Leadership. If you want to access this wealth of knowledge and insight on a regular basis, please subscribe to the show. Join the network of leaders who want to do and be better. You can go to the site spiritualityinleadership.com or your preferred podcast platform to catch all the episodes and learn more. Until next time, take good care of yourself.